tyrius.

Unleaded gasoline is a traded commodity just like oil is. Refusing to buy gas from one brand will not cause them to lower their price of gas to be below the publically traded value of that gas. If they refined more than they sold at their stations (most of which are owned by individuals and not the corporation) they would simply sell the excess on the NYMEX market. These chain emails seem to be passed around by people who are not willing to do the research necessary to show how worthless they really are. And for the person that said that gas is regulated because the price is typically the same. It isn't. The price in a given area is typically the same because the gas station owner's costs (gas, sales tax, other taxes, land, etc) are typically equivalent. Also, station owner's try to price gas at it's replacement cost and not their purchase price. edited to add: There is one sure fire way to lower gas prices and that is to use less of it. If Americans lowered their demand for gas the price would drop significantly.

Believe me think twice before berkely, they smell relly bad especially GULP! -searoach Berkley powerbaits smell like fish catchin' goodness to me!!!! 8-)

X2!! For worms I use only Berkley or ***. Now as for the OP's original question, Catt is dead on. The most important thing to catching big fish is fishing where they live. You can throw 10" worms all day and catch tons of small fish. To catch the big ones you need to first focus on location. This will be one of my big goals for the year. Finding the appropriate structure/cover in the waters that I fish that will hold the larger fish.

Hah! I'm the exact opposite, I grew up fishing almost nothing but plastic worms. Just grab a couple packs of motor oil powerworms and a pack of hooks and I'd be set all day!! Just last year I got back into fishing and started fishing hard baits more. It's put a pretty good dent in my wallet to fill out by tacklebox with spinnerbaits, crankbaits, jerkbaits, and more topwater baits (I fished the jitterbug and hula popper a lot growing up too). Growing up I used an Ugly stick for worm fishing. That thing was most certainly not the best suited rod for worm fishing, but I still caught tons of fish. So, rather than saying it's "impossible" I'd say it's just not ideal. I now use BPS extreme rods for my soft plastic fishing. They are MUCH better than the Ugly Stick, but still far from high end.

Texas rigged worms (Powerworm being my favorite) have been my all time best producer from shore. Throw it out there, let it sink, and SLOWLY reel it in. Bass KILL 'em.

It would be more classy than cheating on your wife! I also wouldn't say anything, but I would more than likely laugh I disagree off if someone did say that!

Hmm, then let me ask a few more questions which I think would be helpful for jig beginners (which I am). Rod recommendations (NOT brands, but action, length, etc) Line recommendations: type (braid, mono, flouro), test, etc Reel recommendations (retrieve speed in IPT, anything special like a flipping bar?) Is your first pitch/flip directly into the center of the cover or do you start on the edges and move in? I'm sure I'll think of more.

Thanks for the info!!! Do you have a preference on the line tie orientation (vertical or horizontal) for grass jigs? Horizontal would be like the Terminator Top Secret jig.

Just for the record this is coming from someone who actually uses both the President and Symetre reels. Isn't the 8030 more of the size of the 1500 symetre? Just as an fyi the weight difference between the 8035 and the 2500 is just 0.7 ounces. And the 8035 President has an ipt of 33 while the 2500 symetre is 31.

Bass and other predator fish are opportunistic feeders. They will basically anything that moves and that they can get in their mouths. As an example, they have albino trout at the BPS near me. Actually seeing an albino trout in the wild is very rare because the color does not camoflage the trout. Instead it sticks out and gets eaten even though the white color is not the "normal" baitfish color. As an angler a lot of times your want your lure to stand out (different color, different size, different motion) from the swarms of baitfish or from the cover that you are fishing. The bass will key on the "fish" that is different and go for it because if it was a real baitfish it would likely have something wrong with it and therefore be easier prey.

He first needs to put in bluegills/sunfish in the fall and then put the bass in the next spring. You need to ensure that you have a good source of food for the bass that you are putting in. If you search your state's DNR website you should find some tips and they may even have a program where they'll send someone out to stock it for you.

The weather actually got nice in Chicago. Hopefully you haven't missed that.

He was the reason for my question. I didn't know why the * was designated as a handpour and what that actually meant. It doesn't appear to have the typical flat side.

It's a public company? If so, it may be a good investment. That stuff rules! BTW, for the most effective application while you are spooling your reel you want to run the line through a rag with the conditioner sprayed on it. Then you will ensure that you have a good initial application. After that spraying it on the spool will work through enough to get the line you actually use. I doubt that you can use too much of it, so I need to also follow RW's advice and spray my filler spools!

So, what's the real difference between the two? When I'm looking at aisles of plastic baits in BPS what is the real difference between handpoured versus all of the other ones? Thanks!!

Fat Ika's and senko's are completely different baits made by the same company. A fat ika resembles a tube, but it's solid.

I don't have a problem using minnows and the like for others species of fish but that is taking it a little too far imo. Hmm, what's the difference? In both instances you're using little fish to catch bigger fish. Seems like it should be considered exactly the same to me. :-?

One other thing that I failed to cover in my previous post is that the price of gas is set on the NYMEX futures market. The actual refining cost has no direct bearing on the cost of gasoline. That cost is driven solely by the commodity market. Now the refiners do make refining decisions based upon the cracking spread of the price of oil compared to the price of gas to see if they can make money by producing gas. If that spread is too low then the refineries will produce less gas, which will drive up the price because the supply is being limited. Hopefully, that makes sense to someone other than me.

I'm not disputing your claim that there is a lot of oil there. My point is that it will take 7-10 years from decision to drill to actual substantial oil flowing from the field. Thus, drilling in ANWR will not rectify any short term supply problems.

It would probably end up costing us more. We would already have to ship the crude here and since there is waste in the crude we'd be shipping more gallons of crude then we would end up with gas. Then it would also cost more to refine it here then it would to refine it in India. The labor costs would be significantly less there. So, in essence it would probably save us money. Now it definately wouldn't make any sense whatsoever for us to ship our crude to India, refine it, and then ship it back. That would cost us more. But we have ample refining supply to handle our domestic production.

Here's a link to what I was talking about. http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0804/gallery.oilcity.fortune/index.html It's FREAKING HUGE!!!

Drilling here will not satisfy short term demand. If we decided today to drill for the oil left in Alaska it would be years before any appreciable supply would make it to our markets. And that is ASSUMING that the 250 year claim is correct. That one sounds a little wild to me. Brazil just discovered a huge field that once they fully tap in about a decade will put them in the top ten oil producers in the world.

Because it has every other time that it has decreased in value (during recessionary times). When the economy recovers the dollar will also recover. Supply of gasoline isn't the problem. The cost of a barrel of oil is the problem. If we had 100 more refineries here in the states that wouldn't affect the price of oil by 1%. Without a significant reduction in the price of oil the price of gasoline will remain high. Refinery capacity has nothing to do with the current gas prices.

Why build them here? A refinery in India is being doubled in size to provide 5% of the worldwide demand of gasoline. Why import oil and then refine it here when we can just import the product that we want (gasoline)?

You do realize that unleaded gasoline is a traded commodity don't you? Big Oil does not set the price of gas. The price is mainly derived by the futures contract as traded on the NYMEX and (shockingly) is driven largely by the price of oil (the largest price input for gas).